News

It’s our first Sunday morning back since our working vacation. I actually had to ask Jon last night if we only got back into town on Tuesday, like this last Tuesday. It seems like we’ve been home longer. It seems like this should be at least our second weekend home, but it’s not.
I’ve got the house to myself and the dogs. Both Trinity and Jon are still up stairs asleep, though I’ll be waking Jon soon. He always requests a wake up call if I get up earlier than he does. Trinity is getting older so she can sleep in, besides she finished all her homework yesterday, which means she gets to sleep in, she’s earned it.
So I sit in the silence. The loudest noise is the refrigerator nearby, which has acquired a rattling hum. You only hear it when the kitchen is majorly quiet, but it has become progressively louder over the months I’ve noticed it. We’re going to have to get a new fridge, I fear. Since it’s a built-in, it just seems like too much hassle, but better to replace before it goes, then after. The dish washer also needs a refit. Can you tel that these are all things that came with the house when we bought it? We’ve replaced the microwave already, but it’s like the march of doom. One appliance goes and it’s just a matter of time.
We could go shopping for appliances today. We already have one thing on the schedule for Trinity’s school. But I don’t really want to shop for appliances. I want to sip my cup of tea and be still and enjoy the silence. Oh, the noise in the fridge has stopped, and now the loudest thing is the soft clacking of the computer keys. Cool. But appliance shopping is like grocery shopping, you can put it off, but eventually the point of diminishing return gets to be pretty high. You have nothing to cook for dinner, or your dishes didn’t get washed, or the thing floods, or the fridge just goes one night and you wake up to ruined food. Darn, I guess I have to be a grown-up. We should go appliance shopping.
Once upon a time I thought if I was successful enough that stuff like appliance shopping would no longer apply. As if a certain level of success would magically make all the petty, mundane, chores go away. When I sold my first book I was in the middle of folding laundry. I got off the phone and the laundry was still there, waiting to be folded. The laundry fairy had not come with her magic wand just because I had accomplished one of my major life goals. I’d sold a book, but I still had to fold the laundry. When my agent, Merrilee, told me of my first really big deal, I was again in the middle of laundry. Again, no laundry fairy showed up, so I had to do it. But it seemed wrong somehow, as if such amazing news should let me out of domestic duty.
The first person I hired about eight, or maybe nine years ago, now, was Sherry. She is our Chief of Domestic Operations; CDO. I’m off laundry duty now, and a lot of other domestic stuff that I always sucked at. The older I get the more I admire people who can make order out of chaos. I can do that on paper, but in a room, or a house, I’m pretty useless. I’m the guy; you know I never notice there’s dust on the window shades. Sherry has trained us up some so that we pick up after ourselves better, but Jon and I are both cluttery people. My office is always my neatest room. My work space is organized. But the rest is a constant challenge, mostly to Sherry.
People ask me what is the best thing about my success. They want some high minded reason. But I think in honesty, the two best things, are being able to have someone else do the domestic bit, and having money so that if my kid needs anything she can have it. That comes from being raised below the poverty line. I remember when growing out of pair of shoes as a child, was a true hardship on the family budget. I think Trinity has more shoes that fit her now, then I did during my entire childhood. She’s always liked shoes. But she can have more than one pair of tennis shoes, and more than one pair of dress shoes, and then there’s boots. Does it seem weird that looking into my daughter’s closet helps me realize how far I’ve come?